DIOGENES: In Search Of An Honest Politician!

DIOGENES invites you to pull up a chair on this rainy day and read
posts from around the world.
The writing may lean to the right...but that's the way Diogenes wants it!
You may leave your opinion,
but Diogenes rarely changes his! WELCOME!

Wednesday, January 17, 2018

Stop Feministsplaining Sex to Men

There's a word that has become popular in feminist circles these days: "mansplaining." The word is a mashup of "man" and "explaining" and refers to men who condescendingly explain the facts of life to women. So, for example, if a man believes a woman doesn't understand directions and slowly repeats those directions to a woman, he's mansplaining and, therefore, guilty of cruelty and stupidity.
Well, feminists, it's time to stop "feministsplaining" sex to men.
The #MeToo movement has been good for America. It's good that women who have been sexually assaulted and abused are coming forward; it's good that we're finally having conversations about the nature of consent and the problems with a casual hookup culture that obfuscates sexual responsibility. But the #MeToo movement hasn't stopped there. Men are now being pilloried for the sin of taking women too literally -- of not reading women's minds.
Take, for example, "Grace," an anonymous woman who went on a rotten date with comedian Aziz Ansari. According to Grace, Ansari treated her abominably: He took her to dinner, gave her white wine instead of red, pushed her to come to his apartment and then engaged in a vigorous round of sexual activities to which she apparently consented. She eventually said no -- and when she did, he stopped. Later, she suggested that Ansari hadn't obeyed her "non-verbal cues" -- nonverbal cues that reportedly included undressing and then voluntarily servicing Ansari.
In the aftermath, Grace felt used. So she texted Ansari, explaining to him that she felt terrible about the date. "I want to make sure you're aware so maybe the next girl doesn't have to cry on the ride home," she said.
This is feministsplaining sex. Here's the problem: The condescension isn't earned. From Grace's story, it seems she was less than clear in her nonverbal communications but she wanted Ansari to read her mind -- and that when he didn't, she therefore had leeway to lecture him about his sins and, more broadly, those of all men.
It's not just Grace. Rachel Thompson of Mashable explained: "The responses to the woman's story are peppered with the word 'should.' She should have said no ... For many women, uttering an explicit 'no' is not as easy or straightforward as you might think." Well, as it turns out, reading minds is not quite as easy or straightforward as feminists might think. It was feminists who boiled down sexual relations to the issue of consent. Traditionalists always argued that physical intimacy and emotional intimacy ought to be linked. But they were accused of removing female agency with such linkage and condemned for "mansplaining."
How about this: no feministsplaining and no mansplaining when it comes to sex? How about we instead focus on communication between men and women? How about sexual partners demand more from one another than physical release so they aren't disappointed that they're being treated as sex objects? A system prizing love and commitment doesn't require nearly the amount of explanation as a system that dispenses with both.

Homeland Security Preparing To Arrest & Charge Sanctuary City Leaders

On Tuesday, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen confirmed that DHS had spoken to the Department of Justice to see if they would be able to level criminal charges against representatives of sanctuary cities who failed to cooperate with the deportation of illegal immigrants in their cities.
In answering questions, Nielsen mentioned that she did not recall President Trump using the term "shithole countries" to refer to immigrants from Haiti and Africa. However, she did tell Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), “I don't remember the specific words [Trump used]. What I was struck with, frankly as I'm sure you were as well, was the general profanity that was used in the room by almost everyone.”
“The Department of Justice is reviewing what avenues may be available,” Ms. Nielsen told Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.
Harris' questions came as a result of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tom Homan statements on Fox News that the Department of Justice was asked to “look into criminal charges for elected officials with sanctuary policies as they are harboring illegal aliens.”
Specifically, he was responding to a "law" that was passed by California on January 1 that sought to protect sanctuary cities that harbor immigration law violators.
The request that was given to the DOJ by Homeland Security was not dodged either.
“The context of this is, of course, not only putting my ICE officers at risk but also finding an efficient and effective way to enforce our immigration laws," Nielsen told Harris.

Selling Hate

Who will warn Americans about hate groups? The media know: the Southern Poverty Law Center.
SPLC, based in Alabama, calls itself "the premier" group monitoring hate. Give us money, they say, and they will "fight the hate that thrives in our country."
I once believed in the center's mission. Well-meaning people still do. Apple just gave them a million dollars. So did actor George Clooney.
They shouldn't.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali grew up in Somalia, where she suffered female genital mutilation. So now she speaks out against radical Islam. For that, SPLC put her on its list of dangerous "extremists."
Maajid Nawaz was once an Islamic extremist. Then he started criticizing the radicals. SPLC labels him an "anti-Muslim extremist," too.
While launching hateful smears like these, SPLC invites you to donate to them to "join the fight against hatred and bigotry."
SPLC once fought useful fights. They took on the Ku Klux Klan. But now they go after people on the right with whom they disagree.
They call the Family Research Council a hate group because it says gay men are more likely to sexually abuse children.
That's their belief. There is some evidence that supports it. Do they belong on a "hate map," like the Ku Klux Klan, because they believe that evidence and worry about it?
I often disagree with the council, but calling them a hate group is unfair. In my YouTube video this week, the group's vice president, Jerry Boykin, tells me, "I don't hate gay people. And I know gay people, and I have worked with gay people."
But once you're labeled a hate group, you are a target.
One man went to the Family Research Council headquarters to kill people, shooting a security guard in the arm before he was stopped.
The shooter told investigators that he attacked the FRC because he found them on SPLC's hate list.
Calling the council a "hate group" made its employees the target of real hate.
SPLC also smears the Ruth Institute, a Christian group that believes gays should not have an equal right to adopt children. The institute's president, Jennifer Roback Morse, says they're not haters.
"I like gay people. I have no problem with gay people. That's not the issue. The issue is, what are we doing with kids and the definition of who counts as a parent."
The institute doesn't argue that gays should never adopt. "There could be cases where the best person for a particular child would be their Uncle Harry and his boyfriend," Morse told me. But the institute wants preference given to "a married mother and father."
For that, SPLC put the Ruth Institute on its hate map. That led the institute's credit card processor to stop working with them. In a letter to the institute, the processor company said that it had learned that the "Ruth Institute ... promotes hate, violence, harassment and/or abuse."
"We went and checked our website," Morse told me, "and we were already down."
I suspect SPLC labels lots of groups "haters" because crying "hate" brings in money.
Years ago, Harper's Magazine reported that SPLC was "the wealthiest civil rights group in America, one that now spend most of its time -- and money -- on a fund-raising campaign." People in Montgomery, Alabama, where SPLC is based, call its elegant new headquarters "the Poverty Palace."
"Morris Dees' salary is more than my entire annual budget," says Morse. "Whatever they're doing, it pays."
Dees, SPLC's co-founder, promised to stop fundraising once his endowment hit $55 million. But when he reached $55 million, he upped the bar to $100 million, saying that would allow them "to cease costly fundraising."
But again, when they reached $100 million, they didn't stop. Now they have $320 million -- a large chunk of which is kept in offshore accounts. Really. It's on their tax forms.
In return for those donations to SPLC, the world gets a group that now lists people like Ben Carson and Fox commentators Laura Ingraham, Judge Andrew Napolitano and Jeanine Pirro as extremists -- but doesn't list the leftist militant hate groups known as antifa.
SPLC is now a hate group itself. It's a money-grabbing slander machine.

What I Learned in the Peace Corps in Africa: Trump Is Right

Three weeks after college, I flew to Senegal, West Africa, to run a community center in a rural town. Life was placid, with no danger, except to your health. That danger was considerable, because it was, in the words of the Peace Corps doctor, "a fecalized environment."
In plain English: s--- is everywhere. People defecate on the open ground, and the feces is blown with the dust – onto you, your clothes, your food, the water. He warned us the first day of training: do not even touch water. Human feces carries parasites that bore through your skin and cause organ failure.
Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that a few decades later, liberals would be pushing the lie that Western civilization is no better than a third-world country. Or would teach two generations of our kids that loving your own culture and wanting to preserve it are racism.
***SNIP***
I couldn't wait to get home. So why would I want to bring Africa here? Non-Westerners do not magically become American by arriving on our shores with a visa.
For the rest of my life, I enjoyed the greatest gift of the Peace Corps: I love and treasure America more than ever. I take seriously my responsibility to defend our culture and our country and pass on the American heritage to the next generation.